Dust embraces the morning
Like a freshly fallen dew
And the steam from the tipple
Extols its weary wisdom,
Chanting in whistles and
The grinding of rotors.
The unquestioning miners
enter into the raped earth,
pulling away its sad remains
and carry it out in wheelbarrows.
The mystic monotone of day
sets like a fog
On the people.
The children run down the
concrete road to the brick schoolhouse
to learn abstractions which
escape the dome of ordinary
in which they are inevitably,
eternally, enmeshed.
The tunnels fill with
metallic sounds and
oily thoughts, drifting
from the small piece of
imagination spared in
these laborers.
The walls of the shaft
moan in pain, but
their cries are unheard.
artificial air sweeping
through the darkness,
dancing the dust into hair
and eyes, twirling and
dipping back to the same place.
In procession they walk
to their quiet homes,
the day dead
and they the pallbearers.
Reverently, they walk up
the stairs and into beds
they fall, with black masks
of work.
